Can a moral principle be tested and confirmed empirically? Can the fact that an event exhibits a moral quality play a role in explaining why a person observes the event as having that quality? Gilbert Harman, in attempting to point to a radical difference between scientific and moral facts, has endorsed a negative answer to these questions. With Harman's discussion in mind, Nicholas Sturgeon takes the affirmative side in his “Moral Explanations,” a potentially influential essay that is now beginning to appear in the textbook anthologies. Sturgeon rounds out his defence of moral realism by further arguing that moral qualities of persons can play an essential role in the scientific explanation of human conduct. Finally, he attempts to enhance the appeal of moral realism by arguing for the plausibility of its compatibility with physicalism. While granting that Sturgeon's discussion is challenging and instructive I shall try to show that on all points mentioned here Sturgeon has failed to make a good case.

Depuis maintenant plus d'un siècle, soit depuis la parution en 1863 de la monographie de J. Freudenthal (Über den Begriff des Wortes øαντασια bei Aristoteles, Göttingen), la tendance générale des interprèetes qui se sont intéressés à l'imagination chez Aristote aura été, sans conteste, de privilégier l'examen du De anima III 3 et de certains textes des Parva naturalia afin de rendre compte de son rôle à l'intérieur de la psychologie aristotélicienne. Ce faisant, on a laissé quelque peu dans l'ombre, consciemment ou non, peu importe, la fonction de l'imagination dans l'explication du mouvement animal et de l'action humaine qu'Aristote nous a léguée essentiellement dans le De motu animalium et le De anima III 7, 9–11. Certes, étant donné l'importance de l'imagination en ces questions, certains exégètes n'ont pas manqué de s'y arrêter, mais la rareté des commentaires sur ces sujets, tout spéecialement le premier, et la possibilité d'apporter de nouveaux éclaircissements nous incitent àen reprendre l'examen. Nous traiterons d'abord du rôle de l'imagination dans l'explication du mouvement animal, puis dans celle, plus complexe, de l'action proprement humaine où l'imagination, de prime abord, pourrait sembler avoir une fonction préjudiciable à l'action réfléchie. Pour effacer ce soupçon à l'égard de la pensée du Stagirite, que bien des philosophes auront manifesté dans l'histoire, il nous faudra, notamment, discuter la question du bien apparent et du bien comme tel en regard de l'imagination délibérative.

Nietzsche's philosophy in extenso may properly be appraised as a sustained endeavour to effect a creative sublation of Western ontology—and thus to nullify the latter's aesthetic Socratic basis—as a prerequisite toward the re-establishment of the instinct-affirming property of the post-Homeric/pre-Socratic Attic tragic paideia. Hence Nietzsche is compelled to investigate art's intrinsically twofold and ostensibly self-contradictory nature; namely, (i) its proclivity to metaphysically abstract Being and (ii) its capability to bring forth a context of ontological absence. Accordingly, paramount to his interest and analysis is his conception that art (in all its manifestations) is entirely and necessarily grounded in the dynamic interplay between the two primary, antithetical but not irreconcilable artistic impulses—(i) the Apollinian and (ii) the Dionysian. As he argues in the opening lines of The Birth of Tragedy (with the apparent conviction of a missionary for the “science of aesthetics”): “The continuous development of art is bound up with the Apollinian and the Dionysian duality—just as procreation depends on the duality of the sexes, involving perpetual strife with only periodically intervening reconciliations.”

In default of astounding findings — Lampe penned much of the critical corpus — it is likely that continued Kantian exegesis will perforce be featured by more pain for less gain. And since philosophical events must in many respects overtake even so monumental a figure as Kant, does not the treatment of Kantian documents in current terms court anachronism? In a fashion which encourages such musings, the contents of this handsomely produced collection of essays, the proceedings of a 1987 conference at Stanford, deviate from straight exegesis. The contributors include prominent commentators on Kant: Lewis White Beck, Paul Guyer, Jules Vuillemin. A number — P. F. Strawson, John Rawls, Stuart Hampshire — are original philosophers of high calibre. Given the divergent pressures of textual fidelity, of novelty, and of philosophicality, the interaction challenges us to consider the prospects. An especially illuminating portion of the discussion in this regard brings together Dieter Henrich, Guyer, and Strawson.

Unwarranted antagonism between reason and the passions is an ancient problem, dating back at least to Plato. Even philosophers who sought to give the passions their due—David Hume for example—juxtaposed reason and emotion and contrasted them as slave and master (or vice versa). The point of a so-called “cognitive” theory of emotion, simply stated, is to deny this antagonism. The most succinct (if not very informative) statement of the cognitivist view is Nietzsche's: “as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.” Hume's own theory anticipated such a synthesis (in his awkward analysis of “ideas” as both necessary causes and effects of emotions) while Spinoza and Hobbes clearly defended cognitive theories with the wisdom of reconciliation in mind. The aim of a cognitive theory is not to reduce volatile emotion to cool and calm belief, nor is the emphasis on emotion a romantic attempt to extol the passions and excoriate reason—though that exercise may have its place in philosophy too; it is rather to understand reason and the passions together and appreciate their shared properties, similarities and complementarity as well as their obvious differences and oppositions. So understood, cognitive theories have, generically, gained widespread acceptance; only a few reactionaries in philosophy and psychology still insist on a cognition-free concept of emotion, however backhandedly cognitive concepts might be acknowledged as presuppositions, causal preconditions or criteria for the appropriate labelling of emotion rather than as proper constituents of emotion.

C'est bien à la question de savoir s'il est légitime de parler d'une connaissance philosophique, que Gilles-Gaston Granger a voulu répondre, et répondre par l'affirmative, en publiant son dernier livre intitulé Pour la connaissance philosophique. À en juger pourtant par les réactions agaçées que provoque souvent cette enquête constamment réouverte sur la nature de la philosophie, il se pourrait bien que nombre de philosophes trouvent un peu excessif de consacrer encore un ouvrage de près de trois cents pages à justifier la portée cognitive d'une discipline qui, au cours de sa longue histoire, a produit autant d'œuvres dont le moins qu'on puisse dire est qu'elles ont hautement contribué à enrichir le bagage culturel de l'humanité. Qui, parmi ceux qui vouent l'essentiel de leur vie à l'enseignement de la philosophie, accepterait de se voir refuser le droit de prétendre transmettre une connaissance authentique? Pourtant, je voudrais soutenir ici que, compte tenu de son contexte, non seulement l'intervention de Granger n'était pas superflue mais qu'elle n'aura pas été suffisante pour établir de façon convaincante qu'il existe telle chose qu'une connaissance proprement philosophique.

Aristotle discusses character in four contexts: ethics, poetic theory, the study of rhetoric and zoology. What he means by character is different in each of these cases, but not radically different. He always uses it as a device to explain actions or behavioural patterns: in animals, in people, and in fictional people. The similarities between the character exhibited by different species, moral character, and tragic character have gone unexamined. As a result, the notion of character as explanatory, and the possibilities and limitations of explanation by means of character are still undetermined.

Moral philosophers continue to divide on the conundrum of Marx and morality — how a ferocious moral critic of nineteenth-century capitalism could also denounce morality as an ideological snare and delusion. In Marxism and the Moral Point of View, Kai Nielsen brings together many years of thought on both terms of the question, rightly seeking a balance between Marx's moralism and Marx's anti-moralism.

La détermination du statut de la dialectique aristotélicienne aura certes été l'une des principales tâches auxquelles se seront consacrés les chercheurs de cette seconde moitié du siècle. Le nombre d'études qui traitent de cette question est en effet considérable. Or en dépit de tous ces travaux, l'interprétation de certains passages, où Aristote traite expressément du statut de la dialectique, demeure controversée. C'est entre autres le cas d'un court passage du chapitre 11 des Réfutations sophistiques (= RS), chapitre à propos duquel É. Weil a déjà écrit, dans un article célèbre, qu'il «est décisif pour l'interprétation de la dialectique». Nous nous efforcerons donc, dans un premier temps, d'interpréter ce passage (11, 172a9–15) à la lumière du contexte précis où il s'inscrit; puis, dans un second temps, nous présenterons et discuterons les interprétations que certains des plus grands aristotélisants contemporains (G. E. L. Owen, J. Owens et P. Aubenque) ont données de ce passage.

This book would better have been called Backward Causation. For its central purposes, the reason for wanting the future to be real is that it must be real if it is to affect the present (see p. 12). Backward causation might be essential to the precognitions reported by paranormal psychologists (p. 20). Philosophers, too, might want it for giving power to Newcomb's Paradox (p. 42–45) in which the presence of a superbly efficient Predictor could discourage what would otherwise be evidently rational behaviour. Again, Time Machines (p. 226–237) and Ray Guns fired into the Past (p. 30f.) have attracted philosophical attention. Finally, and of more interest to Faye, physicists have published hundreds of papers speculating about advanced particles and tachyons. Advanced particles (Chapter 7) are conceived as moving backwards in time. Tachyons (Chapter 8) travel faster than light, which means that at least some observers will be inclined to view their temporal progress as backwards.

In 1959, an article in the Harvard Business Review asked “Can Capitalism Win the Intellectuals?” Thirty years later, affirmative answers are prominent. Economic stagnation and downright collapse in the planned economies of Eastern Europe, coupled with the seeming inability of the deficit-ridden welfare states of the West to maintain social services provide at least part of the explanation. But philosophers have been eager to show that this is more than an historical trend.

According to the jacket cover, John Leslie's Universes is “the first book by a philosopher on these controversial affairs.” Sadly, I must report, the controversy has gotten the better of his philosophy. Leslie's contribution to this area is merely to see, within the dispute, a narrow window through which to promote his own curious view of extreme axiarchism. This alone would not disturb me, were it not for the apparent disdain with which Leslie depicts views opposed to his own, and his infuriating technique of responding to those critics who fail to see the point of his tremendously contrived examples by dogmatically waving these same examples.

Carlos Prado has been much influenced by the thought of Richard Rorty, whose ideas have found application in Prado's earlier philosophical writings on the nature of fiction and on aging. In this book, Rorty's ideas are themselves the object of study. Prado is not attempting a complete examination of Rorty's work, and as a result, Rorty's relations to certain other philosophers he admires—earlier American pragmatists and contemporary uropean thinkers—are not explored to any great extent. The focus, instead, is on the theory of truth, on the issue of objectivity in science, and on Rorty's relation to Donald Davidson and other philosophers of the analytic tradition.

In the Prior Analytics Aristotle examines syllogisms that contain apodeictic and problematic premisses, as well as combinations of these with assertoric premisses. Of these various syllogisms, it is the mixed apodeictic-assertoric type that has received the most attention. Aristotle discusses this type of syllogism in Prior Analytics I.ix–xii. In this paper I will deal primarily with these syllogisms, which I will henceforth refer to simply as ‘apodeictic’.

One reason for professing sympathy for such an unpopular view as libertarianism is that one acquires such worthy opponents. Arthur Ripstein's notice was a pleasure to read and, as I would expect, gives one plenty to think about. In this very brief reply, though, I can only identify some points on which I think he may have misstated my view, or on which I can offer a quick rebuttal.

Whether or not we adopt some form of physicalism in our thinking about the psychology of humans and other organisms we all believe that a mind is something that comes into being, changes, develops and decays. The correlation of the development and then later the decay of our mental powers with changes in the brain post-dates our belief that the mental realm is as much an area where things ebb and flow, come to be and pass away, as is the physical. Even ancient authors who hold to the indestructibility of the soul allow that it changes in a host of ways. It is very odd, then, to discover that Aristotle appears to deny all this and feels impelled to treat the soul as unchanging and motionless. I propose to explore here exactly what Aristotle meant by saying the soul does not move and why he said it. In the end our investigation leads to some difficulties for Aristotle's psychological ontology which I am not able to resolve.